Designed for Cycling

Lancashire cycle campaign group Dynamo has been successfully drumming up public support for a proposed green cycle route to connect Lancaster to Heysham.

The proposal for a new green cycle route to Heysham, as an extension to the Lancaster cycle network, has been made by local cycle campaign group Dynamo.

The group organised a public petition to show the level of support for the scheme and launched an e-petition on Lancashire County Council's website. The group's e-petition and paper petitions collected an impressive 2,412 signatures over the 3 month period leading up to 28 June 2014.

Nearly 100 people from the Leighton Buzzard area have come together to demand that the council invest more funds in better provision for cycling in the town.

Around 90 people at the Linslade Canal Festival wrote a message to Central Bedfordshire Councillors telling them that more needs to be done to help people to choose the bicycle over the car for journeys in and around the town.

Young and old alike flocked to the Leighton Buzzcycles stand at the event to add their message tag to a special bicycle.

New designs out for consultation show that the quality of design for cycling infrastructure has shot up. The new route, which parallels one of London's busiest distributor roads, will now be almost entirely protected from traffic, with generous widths and good continuity.

This is the second consultation on Cycle Superhighway 5 (CS5) - the first design showed little imagination and an unwillingness to remove motor traffic capacity.

The new design is much bolder: the two-way cycle track running along the north side of the bridge is wide and protected by new turning bans, prohibiting crossing motor traffic movements.

The cycle track will be a minimum of 3m, but mostly up to 4 or even 5 metres in places.

£2bn announced for new roads or bigger junctions - with almost none on cycling. Meanwhile, the Department for Transport has announced £15m for 2015-16 to be spent on cycle rail improvements, typically additional cycle parking at railway stations.

CTC isn’t taking sides on whether or not to build HS2 Phase 1 (the proposed high speed rail line between London and the West Midlands), but we do want to make sure that cyclists get the best deal out of the project.

CTC has therefore formally objected to the HS2 Phase 1 Parliamentary Bill, calling for amendments or commitment from the Bill’s promoters to:

Comments

Be the first to comment on this article. Login or register to comment.